Poverty and abundance

A reflection on Ruth 3:1-5,4:13-17 and Mark 12:38-44: preached on Sunday, 12 November

I’ve spent a fair bit of time in the last few days trying to work out where to start with this reflection. Initially, I was drawn to the scandalous bit. You know, start “shock and horror” and go from there. But then I thought, if I was going to talk about poverty and abundance, perhaps I should open by reflecting on my own experience of poverty, or rather my own inexperience of poverty. Then again, it’s important to note that these are women’s stories – stories about women, for women. Again I could speak about this from the depths of my own inexperience of being a woman. So where to begin?

What the heck, let’s start with the scandal!

Naomi says to her daughter-in-law: “observe the place where [Boaz] lies; then, go and uncover his feet and lie down… ” To which Ruth replies: “All that you tell me I will do.”

So Ruth went and uncovered Boaz’s feet.

Have you ever wondered about that? Have you ever paused to consider why Naomi would want her beloved daughter-in-law to do that? She’s just come back from the fields, from hours of back breaking work in the sun and the dirt, and her mother-in-law says, “Go and uncover Boaz’s dirty, smelly feet and lie down with him.” Does that make sense to you?

Perhaps it makes sense if we understand that the bible doesn’t always mean what it says. Sometimes the bible uses a polite word for something else. “Feet” in the bible doesn’t always mean feet! Ever wondered about those six-winged angels in Isaiah that used one pair of wings to fly, another pair to hide their faces, and the third pair to hide… their feet!

“Observe the place where [Boaz] lies; then, go and uncover his feet and lie down… ”

Does this surprise you? Does this shock you? Aren’t you just a little bit scandalised? But doesn’t it make sense now?

These are the lengths to which Naomi and Ruth will go in order to secure a future for themselves and a heritage for their lost husbands. These are the lengths to which resourceful, committed, intelligent women will go, breaking the rules, risking scandal and shame, so that they might honour the promises they have made to each other.

Attitude is everything.

In a world of limited good, those who have little must depend upon those who have a lot. In Jesus’ world, those who had little were entirely at the mercy of those who had an abundance. And generally the attitude of the rich was (and is) to preserve their riches, to only give away what they felt they could afford, and often to only give it away expecting to get something in return. And the attitude of the poor? Well, they had (and have) two choices – resignation (the hopeless acceptance of their lot) or hope (the refusal to concede that what is will always be what is).

Naomi and Ruth were poor – at least, they were poor in material terms, in societal terms; but they were rich in other ways – they were rich in their commitment to one another, they were rich in their resourcefulness, they were rich in their belief that things might be different, and they were rich in their willingness to risk scandal in order to secure a future for themselves and their kin. They were poor and yet they also had an abundance.

If we turn to today’s gospel story of the poor woman and her two small coins, we are immediately confronted by the different attitudes of those who are rich and those who are poor. Jesus drags the attention of his disciples to the generosity of the one who can’t afford to be generous. It’s an attitude thing:

“Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those… For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

Now, when we bring together these three extraordinary women, we find something here which pricks our consciences and which asks us questions about poverty and abundance in our own lives.

In the vast richness of Australian society, how much time to we devote to imagining ourselves to be poor? All the illusions of how hard-up we are while we live without having to worry about where our next meal will come from or whether we will have a roof over our heads at night. When we stop long enough to put aside the illusion of poverty, we know ourselves to be rich; but we also know that it is possible to be rich in the material things yet remain poor in the things that really matter: hope, love, forgiveness, peace, compassion.

These three women operate with an abundance of the intangible things of life. What must it take to give away all that you have? How much generosity? What an abundance of hope there must be to make oneself so vulnerable. What must it take to risk so much for another? How much love? What an abundance of hope there must be to make oneself so vulnerable.

Taken together, these women ask us, “How much hope do we have? How prepared are we to do something in order to realise that hope?’

I suppose that these are the questions I see confronting John and Mary (whose child Amanda was baptised in this service): how much hope do they have for their child’s future? And how far are they prepared to go in order to realise that hope? And these are questions for all of us, parents, grandparents, and single folk alike. What hope do we have for the future, and how far are we prepared to go?

For me, there is something which lies behind the questions I raise. After all, it is possible to be filled with hope and expectations for personal riches; but without belief in the never-ending supply – the abundance – of God’s grace, personal riches mean very little. The world is full of people who are rich beyond dreaming but whose lives are full of emptiness and despair. Without something beyond ourselves, something which calls us beyond ourselves, then we are poor indeed.

But those whose lives are transformed by the living God, who are nurtured and sustained by the overflowing abundance of God’s grace, they are the ones who go beyond themselves to transform the world through love and kindness and compassion. Out of the abundance of grace they give all that they have so that all might live. Amen.